


Long as There Are Stars Above You

by Pervasive_Threnody



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode Tag, Episode: s04e20 The Last Man, Fanart, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, Now Stop Pretending Keller Is a Thing You Need, Rodney Gets Hit by Clue Bus, Romance, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-09 03:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13472685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pervasive_Threnody/pseuds/Pervasive_Threnody
Summary: Because in my little authorial paradise, the sheer incomprehensible magnitude of learning that someone you care about got time-warped thousands of years into the future and that an alternate-reality you devotedthe rest of his lifeto finding said friend and devising a way to send him back home and then died, alone, without even knowing if his plan would work and never getting to see said friend again himself may possibly change your own perspective and cause actual consequences in the reality you live in.  Just a bit.  A little.  Maybe.





	Long as There Are Stars Above You

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sketch of McKay & Shep, after mission style](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/353409) by omg-wtf-yeah-blog-blog of Tumblr. 



He shouldn't be doing this in public, not in front of the entire city--okay, not the _entire_ city, but the way people talk, it might as well be.  Point is, it's really a bad idea, _ever_ , and there is no way this is going to end well.

But it's Sheppard, _John_ , and for days nobody knew whether he was alive or, or _dead_ , a husk, desiccated, his tomb an empty, crumbling city drifting forever in the cold and lonely vacuum of a pitiless universe; they'd never even have _known_ , and this right here?  This is just it.  He's had it.  He's done.  He's through pretending he only cares This Much, not one second longer, fucking just _can't_ anymore.

He waited and watched, biting his tongue, literally, while everyone laughed and cried and fawned over their golden boy; observed in silence, arms folded carelessly, fists white-knuckled, as the med team whisked John to the infirmary to be poked and prodded and clucked over.  Said nothing in the preliminary briefing while he listened to John's halting, truncated report, by the end of which he'd thought he had felt everything there was to feel about this whole clusterfucking mess.

But then he gets about two steps out of the conference room, following John half a step behind, afraid to let him out of sight, constitutionally incapable of dragging his eyes away--and that's when he can't take it anymore. 

Just reaches for John and kind of falls at him, the _hell_ with dignity, because twelve days may as well have been twelve _years_.  He's through waiting because John is here, _John_ , back from the dead again, alive and warm and real, _real_ , so he kind of loses it, a lot.

Cinches his arms around John's waist and breathes him in, the always-scent of his solid body and warm skin, the lingering remnants of stale dried sweat and re-re-re-applied field deodorant and the faded reek of his stupid aftershave and his stupid gel for his stupid hair.  His stupid hair, still windswept by currents of air nobody else will breathe for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, maybe _not_ _ever._

John's still shedding sand from odd places, and his shirt is streaked with dirt and dust that's old old _old_ , but that's John too somehow:  John of the thousand wretchedly hot days, trudging, ambling, running by his side.  John of the interminable frigid nights encamped on deserted, desolate worlds, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder for warmth.  John of the days and nights and more days of huddling close, waiting to escape, waiting for rescue, his presence a reassuring talisman against the cold and fear and dark.  Always a huddle, pressing together, pushing away the world, _this far, no farther, you can't have us yet_.

Suddenly the immediacy of _John_ , _here_ , dissipates when he realizes something kind of important.

John isn't hugging him back.

Is, in fact, doing the sort-of-polite wiggle-thing that's universal to small children desperate to get away from schmoopy, grabby great-relatives: arms hanging limp, body tense, like maybe he's in pain, like maybe it's _hurting_ him or he's--

\--embarrassed?

He's embarrassed.

John, embarrassed of _him_.

He has a sudden horrible insight, _nononono_ , that maybe, maybe John has _always_ been embarrassed of him--not intentionally or even consciously--just, so long as they kept their distance, never crossed That Line, it wasn't a problem, it was all well and good to be Extra Special Bestest Buddies when nobody important was watching, when there was nothing better to do, nobody _better_ to spend time with, but when _Feelings_ happen-- _in front of people--_ and okay, this right here, this thing they're doing isn't a thing two guys are air-quote supposed to do, especially U.S. military-type guys, like, _ever_ , and he _knows_ people are watching, _knows_ what they're going to think--

But John was _dead_ for twelve days, _fifty-thousand_ _years_ , lost in time, alone, _gone_ , and there were _two funerals_ for an empty casket and it's too much.  All at once and a long time coming, he's tired of the rules, sick of playing the game, so, so fed up with this stupid farce, tired of every day pretending John only half-matters to him when he knows, now, that nothing--nobody else--if he lost _them_ , he'd grieve but for them he wouldn't--he _didn't,_ _but h_ e'd give it all away for-- _oh_ , _John_.

There's more wiggling, now, firm resistance, John using all his strength to propel his body away, almost like he's hearing these stupid sentimental inappropriate thoughts, _Uh-Oh, Feelings!_   _Gotta escape now now now._   And his heart falls and shatters at his feet because he knows this is the part where they'll just kind of half-smile at each other, and it'll be Really Fucking Awkward for a while, _remember-when-you-blew-up-five-sixths-of-a-very-probably-uninhabited-solar-system_ , _that_ kind of Really Fucking Awkward, and they'll never, ever talk about it again but it'll always be there, lurking, the big goddamned elephant with its ass planted in the center of every conversation _forever_ \-- _stupid_ , what was he _thinking?_   Doesn't matter that they're friends-- _supposed_ to be friends, _just_ friends, good friends, buddies, doesn't matter, people are going to stare and gossip and snicker and _tell_ , and he just.

Blew it.  Trashed it.  Threw it all away.

He looks at his feet and keeps looking at them as he shuffles away because he can't look at John, just can't face the truth of what he's done, that he's lost, trampled on, ruined the best relationship, friendship, whatever, that he's ever had--that he _thought_ he'd had--in a moment of stupid pathetic weakness, all because he just had to fuck it up with _Feelings--_ why is physics so laughably simple while people are so fiendishly _complicated?_ \--overstepped the boundaries, _again_ , wanting something he's not supposed to have, that he didn't even know he _wanted,_ not until it was too late.  Can't look, because as long as he doesn't look he can pretend a little longer, keep believing the lie for just another moment that it wasn't imaginary, that he was ever anybody's _real_ friend, that he was more, could ever _be_ more than someone's exasperated tolerance, a professional obligation, a useful nuisance--

He doesn't realize he's babbling aloud, that John _did_ hear him, doesn't have a clue until there's a pressure on his lips, a soft touch that draws him out of his snowballing thoughts and momentarily stills his panic, and he realizes it's John, _John's_ fingers on his lips, and nothing has _ever_ shut him up so fast.

All his words, every excuse dams up behind the presence of those gentle fingers and there's no escaping now, no hiding from the stupid thing he's done, so he takes a deep breath, braces himself for John's anger or embarrassment or disgust, probably all of the above, for doing this to him, making John appear _vulnerable_ , making people think All-American Ladies' Man Flyboy Sheppard _Cares Like That_ , _about McKay?  Ew_.

So he pretty much deserves whatever he's got coming, but if he's learned one thing, it's how to speak first, bark louder, talk faster, don't give them any more chance to hurt you than necessary, so he wills himself to tip his chin, summon every whit of righteous indignation--

\--wait, but his chin is already lifting--no, it's _John's_ hand doing the lifting?  And now _he_ wants to get away, but it's too late, it's over, face the music, there's no way out now.

The floodgate bursts.  He shuts his eyes and babbles, "Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't.  I'm not.  I _wouldn't_ \--"

"Rodney!"  Two hands, John's warm, strong hands brush his shoulders, hover like restless fluttering birds.  Nervous birds.  Like they're hesitant to land.  Not sure of their welcome. 

"Rodney.  Hey.  It's okay."

He squinches his eyes together more tightly.  Crazy yellowish geometric patterns gyrate on the insides of his eyelids.  Maybe he'll just _pass out?_   Can you make yourself do that?  He's willing to try. 

"No, no, no, it isn't, I just _threw_ myself at you like an _idiot_ \--"

"Rodney."

"--and people _talk_ , why, I don't know, because _look_ at you--" he flaps his hand in a general John-shaped direction--

"Raawd-neee."

"--and look at _me--_ " handflap "--why anyone would actually _believe_ \--and God, you, you have enough to worry about as it is without everyone snickering behind your back--"

"McKay!"  The fluttering hands come to rest on his shoulders, firmly, to give him a little shake.  "Rodney.  I _am_ looking at you.  Open your eyes.  _Please_."

"Colonel--"

He's on the brink of pushing away by force when it _happens_ , so warm and unfamiliar and completely unexpected but so _good_ all he can do is stand there inert, speechless, helpless.  Just the tiniest pressure to his eyelids, like--fingertips? _soft gentle warm--_ then finally it hits him, takes his lofty genius this long to figure it out because no one has ever done this to him before, no one _ever_ , and the world-ending realization comes all at once that--

\--that he's in a _hallway_ , in _public_ , people are passing on all sides, and Sheppard, Colonel, _John_ is--is kissing his closed eyelids, over and over, where anyone can see them, _on purpose_ , _why isn't anybody laughing?_

He squeaks and twitches back a little, opens his eyes and looks around, astonished, because people are just milling around, going back and forth, like this happens so often they don't even notice anymore, much less care, and _no one is laughing_.

Then he looks at John, and wholly nonexistent God, he's been struck dumb over and over today, each revelation a bigger mindfuck than the last; but this, this is--he doesn't even _know_ what he doesn't know that this is.

Because he thought he'd seen every last expression, every emotion John Sheppard could wear on his face, show in his eyes, but this is a John Sheppard he's never seen before, not even when someone's injured, not when their people die, not when John's own _father_ died.  This is a John Sheppard wrecked, _ruined_ , this is what he looks like when he's lost _everything_ that matters--

Panic vise-grips his throat.  "Hey," he forces out, "are you--"

" _Rod_ ney, I--"  Paper-thin, skin-fragile, John's voice cracks, bleeding everything he won't, _can't_ say into his words.  " _I-left you behind_."

"What--"

" _Three.  Times._ "

Wait.  _This_ is what it takes to break John Sheppard?  A stupid hologram of--

Oh.

 _Oh_.

There are so many, _many_ things he wants to say to that, like _you idiot_ and _you idiot, it_ _wasn't even_ ** _real_** _, only_ ** _you_** _would care so much about ditching a **hologram** _ and _you idiot,_ ** _how_** _is a goddamned solar flare_ ** _your_** _fault,_ and _you idiot, have I failed to mention you're an incorrigible idiot?_ But he doesn't because it doesn't matter, none of it matters except that John's right _here_ but, but no he _isn't_ , looks so _lost_ somehow, like he's still out there, where he landed millions and millions of miles and thousands and thousands and thousands of years away from everything and everyone he ever cared about, no imaginable way to get home; broken, somehow, by what he learned and heard and saw; _shattered_ , like he lived every single one of those thousands of future days, alone; died, alone, the very, only, last man alive.

And at that thought something breaks in him too, again, and he's holding his arms open, and this time John falls into him, and this time they fall _together_.

Now _John's_ the one clutching fiercely, arms wrapped around his shoulders, nose buried in his hair, shuddering like he's about to fall to pieces, and it's making him want to say stupid, meaningless things like _Hey, it's okay,_ and _I'm here_ , _you're safe now_ when it is _not_ okay and _nobody_ is safe here, _ever_ , because clearly this entire galaxy has been trying to kill them all, from day one to one hundred thousand, quod erat _demonstrandum,_ right the hell in front of him.

But, he thinks, arms slipping around John's waist, burying his face in John's warm shoulder, they _will_ be okay.  Because maybe John is broken, and maybe he's still lost, but he's got Rodney, oh, yes, yes, he does; Rodney, who can fix _anything_.  Rodney, who refused to let go when everyone else had given up.  Rodney, who cast a net into the universe, found John and showed him the way home.

He knows Teyla's still out there, and that they have an assault to plan, a rescue mission to mount, Michael's ass to kick and how much does he just want to _obliterate_ that punk, blow him to smithereens, eleven trillion microscopic particles of piss and sundered mortal terror expanding ever outward in a graceful arc through spacetime; but it's so good just to be here with John, more than good enough to hold him and be _held_ , new and strange and wonderful, so good that he wants to stay here and stay here and never leave--

Then--but then, John is trying to push away _,_ _again? you unbelievable--oh nononono don't you dare asshole-_ -

\--and then, and _then_ there's a rushing sound in his ears like he's flying and his heart speeds _up up up_ like he's falling as John cradles his face and leans in and kisses and kisses and kisses him like he's trying to live every single one of those lost tomorrows all at once, oh, _God_ , his lips are dry and desert-cracked but soft and full and so hot and perfect he might actually _die_ and it's all he can do to hold on and kiss and kiss and kiss back and cling to John and let himself be pulled under--

\--but he's startled away, _RUDE_ , from the kiss as the hallway erupts in a reverberating din of claps and cheers and whistles.  He looks around frantically and oh, yes, they are looking, they're _all_ looking, watching, all of them, the same faces from before; suddenly he knows, just _knows_ every single one of these bastards has been shuffling around here, pretending to be occupied, waiting for this, signaling the infernal grapevine, from the second he and John confronted each other.  Like they _knew_.  Money is changing hands in the distance and he's so going to _kill_ Zelenka.  Kill _all_ of them.

"About damn time," some wiseass yells.

"D'you mind?  Busy here," he yells back, flips the bird all-inclusively, prompting a ripple of laughter and wolf whistles as he turns to John and promptly forgets anyone else exists, because _John_.

Not just stupidly hot, stupid-haired, stupidly slouching Colonel Sheppard but  _John,_ who's all of those things but now, finally, someone he can _touch_ , who's warm and solid and alive and real and _here_ and, most incredible of all, all _his_.  He thinks.  Maybe?  He'd damn well _better_ be--

"But, but, wait," he stammers, "You--you pushed me away?  Earlier.  I thought.  Then why--"

"Rodney."  John gives him the Team Leader Squinty Stare of Disapproval.

He swallows reflexively.  He _will_ die before admit he's been conditioned to that look.

"Y-yes, Col--Sheppard--John?"

"I was _suffocating_ , okay?  You were kind of _crushing_ me."

There's a long, long silence full of blinks.

"Oh."

"Yeah, _oh_."

"Wait.  That's it?  You _weren't_ trying to, to get away from--I thought--"

John donkey-laughs.  Hard.

It's categorically the worst and the best sound he's ever heard.

"You _are_ a genius, right?  I'm afraid I'm going to have to see your papers.  For identification."

He feels light enough, free enough to laugh.  Feels obliged to say instead, punctuated with appropriate amounts of huff, because one must reinforce the training of one's sidekick with absolute consistency,

"You most certainly may _not_ see my papers, particularly since you've already admitted I am one--in the presence of others, I'm justified to add."

"No, I didn't!--"

"Gate room.  Witnesses," he lilts.

John's expression crumbles.  "Remind me why I came back?"

Like he's not going to see through that fake stupid pout.  He wants to kiss that stupid face, then remembers he can, he can, it's all _his_ , and maybe John's a stupidly haired dumbass but John is _his_ stupidly haired dumbass, and he's not letting John Sheppard and his stupid face get away ever, ever again, not _ever_ , no matter what the hell it takes.  Even if he has to break every one of his precious laws of physics, defy anyone who has the power to get in his way, because he _can_ , and he _will_ , _try and fucking stop him_.

He gives John a nice, long, deliciously dirty once-over, from the tips of his stupid hair to his stupid knobby ankles, and licks his lips, giddily, greedily satisfied with what he sees, yes, yes, oh yes he is. 

" _Crushing_ you, huh?  You'd better get used to it, because I plan on quite happily crushing you _and_ suffocating you, many times a day, every day, for a very, very long time."

John inhales a breath and holds it, bites his lower lip--wait, nerves, he's nervous, they read each other's body language like open books now, and why the nerves, oh God, if John backs out _now_ he's going to track another solar flare and send his ass right back there--

But--

\--but John smiles, slow and warm and brilliant, a dawning of hope and promise and, and maybe even something like _joy._ Nudges their foreheads together, and oh, oh, this is what it--might be how it felt when John first stepped through the gate and the city shivered and stirred and woke to his mere presence, action potential of a thousand million nerve conduits primed for his command.  How it might feel when he touches something inert and it surges alive like it's been _waiting_ for him, like it was _made_ for this; its component parts, every element and molecule and atom, snapping to polarized attention, crackling with heat and energy and kinetic fascination until they're consumed by it.  Love, catching _fire_.

And his eyes might--just might, he'll deny it forever--be burning a little too, so he's grateful when John leans in closer still and whispers into the breath between their lips,

"I like to plan ahead.  Can I purchase in bulk?  Maybe a few hundred thousand, and make it a standing order?"

Because now he does laugh; says, already breathless, as he closes the distance between them one final time,

"Every.  Last.  One."

***

**Author's Note:**

> You know, a while back I wrote a thing. At the time I was excited. "Yay, writer's block is over," I said to myself. Oh, you sweet summer child.
> 
> Four months, thousands of words and two dozen failed stories I was _actually super-specially enthused about_ and endless amounts of hair-pulling frustration later, something _finally_ shakes loose. Seriously. Can I sell my muse on eBay? Beat stories out of it like a piñata? Is that frowned upon? 
> 
> Well, I seem to have better success actually dredging up something satisfactory if I find a piece of fanart I really like and put the image to words, so I tried it and made a stream-of-consciousness thing (which seems to make it MUCH easier to articulate words), and that's what happened with the one here. I love this sketch! So many things to be said in just a few lines on paper. 
> 
> I started out describing just what I saw, but it quickly morphed into a "Last Man" episode tag. Ugh. I hate that one as much as I love it because there is SO much raw emotion but it's pretty much all horribly sad and lonely and despairing. And then... there are zero long-term effects. Well, okay, there are people not dying and Teyla being rescued, but afterward there were, like _no_ real consequences for John and Rodney's relationship. In fact he trots off to...whatever with Keller, who didn't even believe he could do it and didn't want him to try. (To no one's surprise. Sigh.) 
> 
> If someone I cared about did that for me, or if I found out _I_ had done that for someone...just...it would change things. A lot.
> 
> Anyhow, a huge and heartfelt thank you to omg-wtf-yeah-blog-blog on Tumblr, a lovely person I don't know, for breaking a four-month dry spell. You should color this picture. Are you even here at AO3? I don't know, but thank you. I hope it's okay I used it. 3:
> 
> Finally, the useless muse is doubleplus happy, apparently, if music is added. So have this dreamy rendition of the song that provided the title, which is one of my favorite love songs of all times. OF ALL TIMES. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPLp9_SpPZA
> 
> Thanks for reading. :3


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